A Bronx cheer....

In the last basketball game of his career - the 1952 NCAA championship - Bob Zawoluk scored 20 points to become the all-time scoring leader at St. John's University (NY).

He went on to play three years in the NBA - and then stepped off the planet. His name simply vanished from the public prints, and it wasn't until 1985 that it surfaced in a newspaper report: "Chris Mullin's 32 points against Boston College last night broke St. John's career scoring record set by Bob Zawoluk in 1952."

It surprised us. We hadn't realized that the Zawoluk record had endured that long. But what about the person? Where had he been all this while and what had he been doing? The story didn't say.

We had to wait 13 more years for the answers. And this time it stunned us. On September 2, 1998, we learned that the big fellow with the soft touch and Hollywood looks had gone scoreless in the game of life. His line score was a disaster: drugs, alcohol, shoplifting, imprisonment, a broken marriage, family

estrangement.

We couldn't believe the succession of air balls. How could the Bob Zawoluk we remembered from 1948-55 gone so utterly ballistic? But, as we read on, we could sense an undercurrent in the story. Despite all the catastrophes, Zawoluk had never quit on himself. He was still trying to put his life together.

He was now living in a rented room in a corner of the city close to a big CUNY college. He would walk around the Lehman College track every chance he got, and it made him feel good.

In the shadow of the classic gothic structure with all the young people scurrying by, he would think: how great it would be to become part of a college scene again.

One afternoon, the athletic director at Lehman College, Marty Zwerin, heard a knock on the door and when he looked up he saw a tall, solidly built 68-year old man approaching his desk.

It was Bob Zawoluk. He introduced himself to Zwerin and told him what he had been and what he had in mind: Could Lehman College use a volunteer basketball coach? He told Zwerin about everything that had happened to him over the years and that he had never coached before, but that he believed he could help the kind of kids who played on the city university teams.

Marty Zwerin had never heard of Zawoluk, but he liked the big man and was impressed by the clippings that Zawoluk had brought with him. He told Zawoluk that he would check with his head basketball coach and the administration, and then get back to him. Four days later, Bob Zawoluk became the assistant basketball coach at Lehman College.

In the large order of the universe, this wasn't exactly headline news. But it mattered. It was about the real world, struggle and survival, an aging man in need of a break, and the kind of college and good people who are dedicated to education and social service - helping people.

Somehow we felt that this story was going to have a happy ending. Bob Zawoluk was going to work out fine and the kids were going to like him.

To kids and coaches, the W's always matter. In the larger order of this particular scene, something counts a little more than W's. This one was about caring and goodness.